


Foregone Conclusions

by mugsandpugs



Series: Dad Logan [1]
Category: X-Men Evolution
Genre: All chapters can be read as standalones, Backstory, Bullying, Child Abandonment, Drug Use, Gen, Homelessness, Past Child Abuse, Some Holocaust Mentions/References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-09
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2018-12-13 04:34:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11752101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mugsandpugs/pseuds/mugsandpugs
Summary: They are the bad kids. The boys from the wrong side of the tracks. Destined to fill jail cells. Predicted to be burdens on society.(Prequel to This Must Be the Place)





	1. Look at Me! (Lance Alvers)

_He was nine_ and running with a pack of street kids, kicking rocks and scaring the younger Suburbanites with their shouting and carrying-on. They weren’t harmless, but they were close to it; more dangerous in their imaginations than in any reality.

Lance liked this group better than anyone at his school. Nobody here cared that he wore jeans another boy had donated to Goodwill weeks ago, nor cared they how mortified he'd felt when said boy recognized and called Lance out on the history of his clothes. Nobody noticed that he was dirty from sleeping outside again- sometimes mom forgot to unlock the door at night, but that was usually alright so long as it wasn’t too cold. 

His school was rich but his neighborhood was poor. None of the suburban kids had a different dad every weekend- never the same face twice. Sometimes the dads were friendly, but sometimes they threw bottles and one- he would never, could never forget- had held him down and seared his arm with the butt of a cigarette until his mother, in a fit of rare, screaming maternal instinct, had driven the man from the house with a kitchen knife. 

“Get out of here, kid,” the grand majority of the men his mother brought home dismissed him. “I’m sick of looking at you.” 

So he played outside without bedtime and without restrictions. All neighborhoods were his territory to roam, and roam he did. He surrounded himself with other kids; teenagers, when he could make them stay. He knew he was good at making people like him, making them listen when he really tried, and he so hated to be alone after dark. 

. 

_He was thirteen_ and on the fifth- or was it sixth?- group home. It was so easy to lose track- they were all the same. Shuffle and settle and move again. Wash, rinse, repeat. 

It wasn’t that his mother hadn’t wanted him. More that she'd seemed to forget more and more every day with every spoon held over every candle and every belt tightened around her bicep that he was there at all. Some days he couldn't tell if she was fading from reality, or he was. He began going to school out of hunger and a need for warmth more than for any other reason, knowing instinctively never to say anything, but they took him away anyway. By then his mother was just too gone to fight for him. When he met her eyes that final day as an agent took him to gather his belongings, hers were a void of stars. 

He dreamed of those familiar yet distant eyes more than he cared to admit. They haunted him. 

So now he peacocked and strutted, made a name for himself at each new house. Troublemaker, they called him, but he was so small that he had no other choice. First impressions were everything and if you looked like a pushover you’d be fighting from the bottom of the barrel for every scrap of anything- food, clothes, attention- the powers that be tossed your way. 

He was never the smartest- though he was far from dumb. Nor was he the fastest, the funniest, the cutest, the strongest, or the toughest. He was never any kind of ‘est’, and that left him dangerously close to disappearing entirely from the eyes of underpaid and overworked government employees. The gnawing need for attention was a hunger that could never be sated. _Look at me,_ he thought, in ever-growing frustration, when eyes would skim over him without so much as pausing for a moment. _Look at me!_

Sometimes he lashed out. Throwing punches. Breaking desks. Setting fires. Only then did people see him long enough for him to be reassured that he was even still there. 

. 

_He was fifteen_ and growing faster than his flesh could keep up; the first time he noticed thin ribbons of shiny skin at his shoulders and hips, he’d feared that he truly was tearing from the inside out. 

“Stretch marks,” the older boy who shared his room explained, when Lance had shifted his t-shirt in question. “You’re gonna be tall. Look at your feet.” 

Lance’s feet _were_ growing. So were his hands. So was his nose. It seemed every day something new was happening. He was greasy as an oil slick; he smelled so bad that even he could barely tolerate himself. None of his clothes fit, and at night sometimes his bones ached so dully that he was kept awake with tears pricking his eyes. 

As he grew bigger, the world grew smaller. Like a cat with its whiskers cut, he sometimes smacked his head on low ceilings or door frames, and his legs hung long off the end of his bed. He felt no different inside, but suddenly the ground was much farther away. 

But that wasn’t the most remarkable change. That came mid-afternoon when he’d stayed home from school, complaining of a migraine. The headaches were a bad new development- like a hangover that lasted and lasted, only growing in intensity until it reached a near-screaming pique, so intense he thought it might kill him. 

He hoped he hadn’t been knocked in the head so bad during his last stint in juvie that he’d developed some sort of aneurysm pressing on his brain. That was possible, right? He remembered watching part of a TV special on that sort of thing. 

Then he started wishing the aneurysm _would_ burst, if only to end this pain. Light was unbearable. _Sound_ was unbearable. He couldn’t remember the exact moment he’d risen from his bed, stumbling blindly for help, because time seemed to be skipping; lost seconds skittering away from him like sand through his fingers. He was going to be ill. He was going to throw up all over the carpet, and then he’d just have to clean it up, if he didn’t die first. 

“Help,” he said, or thought he said. 

Two of the grouphome employees were talking in the kitchen. They didn’t so much as spare him a glance as he approached them, continuing to gossip about so-and-so’s pregnancy and who might be the father. “Help!” he said again. 

Their conversation persisted. Lance’s anger rose like bile, like volcanic lava, tectonic plates shifting and clicking with the rotation of the earth underfoot. He was dying, and nobody could so much as be bothered to notice. 

“Look at me!” He roared, and as he did so, the earth gave a mighty, violent tremble, sending both employees to their knees as, around them, the house shook and rumbled, plaster raining down as deep cracks snaked their way up the ceiling and pooled onto the roof, threatening to send the whole structure crashing down. 

They stared up at Lance now, jaws dropped, eyes bugged, like he was the devil incarnate. 

As the shaking faded, so too did the ache in Lance’s brain, dimming more and more until it was a manageable heat tucked back in his skull- a heat he could flare anew simply by prodding it gently. A heat he knew would not be extinguished so long as his heart beat and his lungs expanded. 

He had done this. 

It was not fear but elation that caused him to turn on his heel and run. 

. 

_He was sixteen_ and alone with a great secret that lengthened his stride and crooked his grin. It felt marvelous, like he’d found a cheat code for life. He was _special._ He was different! What other teenager- no, what other _person_ in the whole entire world could cause earthquakes with their brain?! 

He practiced often. On his own with this marvel, it was very trial and error as he mastered the basics. Well, okay, so he hadn’t quite _mastered_ them yet- they seemed to slip in and out of his control with his emotional state- but he at least understood them better, and (usually) knew when to stop before he overtaxed and near-fried his brain. 

Also, he was pretty sure he’d irreparably destroyed a vital city canal once just by practicing on cement- whoops- but he couldn’t deny the thrill he’d felt when the news anchors called the resulting flooding an act of God. Was that what he was- a god?! And if he was a god, didn’t it stand to reason that there were others? 

The answer to that question fell, quite literally, in his path one day in the form of a petite girl roughly his age tumbling through the lockers she’d been trapped inside and knocking the both of to the ground. He’d gawked at her as she climbed to her feet. 

She’d fallen through the lockers. Not out of them. _Through_ them. Like they were butter. No, mist. No, like they just hadn’t been there at all. 

In the split-second before she’d turned to face him, his brain replayed those last few seconds again and again and again, trying to make sense of it. No matter how he looked at it, there was only one explanation. 

“Did you see what you just did?” He asked, eyes wide, an awed smile- not a smirk, not a snarl, but a true smile brightening his face. He feasted his eyes on her. She was cute, but not in a way that would normally have drawn his eye. Small and neat, with 'good girl' stamped all over her from her high ponytail to her pink sweater to the toe ring visible through her sandals to the name brand of her backpack. Her eyes were baby blue, innocent in a way his had likely never been. 

Despite this, despite all of it, he knew they were the same. 

She denied this, denied all of his praises like they were accusations, so he’d showed her his own abilities to appease her alarm. 

For some reason, this didn’t work as well as he’d imagined, leaving him to stare after her in puzzlement when she ran. Didn’t she see that she was a god, too?! What would a god ever need to run from? 

The answer to that, as it turned out, was a lot of things. He'd messed up, and badly. He lost her. But he met another of their ‘kind’- a psychic in a wheelchair and a redheaded telekinetic who sneered at him like he’d tracked mud over her pristine corduroy trousers before leading the girl- Kitty- away. They’d seen him, they’d _looked_ at him, and still they’d found nothing but trash, same as the rest of the world. 

Still, though. One was a fluke. Two was a miracle. But three? Four?! He now knew that he was part of something much bigger than he’d first imagined… And he was back to square one in doing a darn thing about it. He was still a nobody. 

But then there was one more. A woman who wore the faces of many, appearing before him in her true form. He looked at her- her azure skin, her pupilless white eyes. Just as he had with Kitty, he felt no fear; only awe. 

And she looked at him, and _looked_ at him, and kept looking. He held very still, breath bated, waiting for a verdict. 

“I have much to teach you, my young Avalanche,” she declared grandly, and his shoulders sagged in silent relief. She’d been the first to ever see him and declare him hers despite what a disappointment he must appear. He would have followed her anywhere. 

He stepped into the name she’d given him and found it welcomed him like the most familiar warm coat tailored just for his size. _Avalanche._

“Where do we start?” he asked.


	2. Don't Leave Me! (Todd Tolanski)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Devastate**  
>  _verb_  
>  To lay waste; render desolate by grief or destruction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for briefly referenced child sexual assault.

His mother called him her little tadpole, and _little_ was exactly the right word for him.

Todd was a tiny thing. His mother was no giant herself, but he could easily curl up in her arms and disappear under her chin when they went to sleep at night, warmed by her heartbeat and blankets. 

The others that passed through the streets of Queens- his mother seemed to know them all, from Big Dave to Patches and Dime- all had things to say about Eudora's son. _"His eyes are like golden suns,"_ claimed men trying to charm her. _"What a disgusting little rat,"_ sneered others, who wanted them gone from their doorsteps and parking lots. _"He won't survive the winter."_

Eudora blithely ignored them all. All his fuzziest, earliest memories were of her smile. "Do good unto the world," she said, "and it will do good unto you." 

The funny thing was, she was right. She was so consistently and bizarrely lucky that, many years later, Todd found himself wondering if _she_ were the mutant he'd inherited the X-gene from, and not whoever his father may have been. 

For example, she could usually find fresh food, even when the dumpsters turned up nothing edible and the food pantries were running low. "Let's walk to fifth avenue tonight," she'd decide. "I just have a _good feeling_ about it." And, sure enough, there'd be an art show with free pizza and punch, or a lost tourist to point in the right direction who'd be grateful enough to offer cash as thanks. 

When she wanted work, she could sometimes find it, and when they needed a warm, safe space to stay, she'd close her eyes, think it over, and then brighten, heading off intuitively to some previously unconsidered place. 

One day, in response to a particularly cruel comment from a passing stranger - an inquiry Todd knew that he was too young to understand, about what species his father must have been to produce such an "ugly" brat, Todd looked to his mother for guidance. He never knew how to handle such instant hostility from strangers; didn't understand why he was so violently hated just for existing. 

Eudora arched a lofty eyebrow and then replied, loudly and distinctly, "Ha! Ha! Ha!" 

Todd, grateful for a lead to follow, chimed in with his own "Ha! Ha! Ha!" and punctuated it by sticking his long tongue out as far as it would go. 

Their insultor looked at them like they were both absolutely crazy, then quickly kept walking. 

"Remember this, Toddles," his mother reminded him once they were alone. "Don't you ever let anybody take your laugh away. Even if you have to force it with your whole heart. It's the best weapon you'll ever have." 

"Yes, mama," Todd agreed easily. 

"Let me hear it, baby," Eudora insisted, looking uncharacteristically serious. 

Todd cocked his head and tried again as she'd asked: "Ha! Ha! Ha!" 

Eudora joined him with a forced laugh of her own. They continued this until it was no longer forced, until they were both laughing uproariously over how silly they both sounded. Todd giggled so hard that tears welled in eyes and his wheezes took on the ' _chrrrp, chrrrp,_ ' quality of a toad's nighttime call. 

Mama was right, Todd realized. There _was_ a strange magic to be found in laughter. 

. 

Still, though, there was no protecting her unusual son from the world. It seemed that he was growing odder by the day. Normal children, Todd realized, did not have webbed fingers and toes to help them swim fast and graceful as a fish. _Normal_ children did not have joints that bowed outwards, did not sit at a crouch with springs in their calves and elbows, ready to leap, to hop, to _play._

And his _skin..._

"Mommy, mommy!" a little girl once pointed at Todd in a mall's food court, eyes- brown, not gold; Todd had never seen another child with eyes like his- huge in awe. "That boy is _green!_ " 

It wasn't blatantly obvious- no Crayola-shade like the crayons Todd used at the library, or soap-green like that goop in the YMCA showers- but it was true; in bright fluorescent lights, Todd's chalky pallor took on a distinct verdant sheen. 

Todd smiled at her; her long box-braids; the rosy gleam to her cheeks, just as curious about her as she was of him. She couldn't have been much older than he, but already she was close to a head taller. "Hiya! I'm Todd! What's your name?" 

She was about to answer when her mother dragged her away by the hand, glaring suspiciously at him like the shopkeepers did when he stole things and they knew it but couldn't prove it. He wanted to tell her that he wasn't going to steal her daughter, that he only wanted to _talk_ to her, just for a minute, when the woman's hushed words silenced him: "We don't talk to children like him, Madeline!" 

Eudora was concerned when he didn't play their usual game that night as she tucked him into their nest. The game where he hid under the blankets while she playfully pretended to search for him. ( _"Where, oh_ where _has my sweet Toddles gone? Oh, woe is me!! I miss my darling tadpole!"_ until, giggling, he hopped out at her, arms extended to be held. _"Right here, mama!!"_ ) 

Instead, he just watched her with a solemn face as cars on the bridge above them zoomed and rattled, headlights bright. Eudora's skin was brown, like that Madeline girl's, and her eyes too. Her fingers weren't webbed and, though she was short, she wasn't unusually so. 

"Mama, why am I like this?" 

Eudora considered him, sitting with her knee bent, an arm braced on one chubby thigh. Todd attempted to mimic her posture, but couldn't. His body just didn't bend that way, not like-- 

_Normal people._

"People have been asking that question since the beginning of time, baby," she told him thoughtfully, lighting a cigarette from the pack she always carried. "Sometimes they ask each other, or books, or doctors, or God. I couldn't tell you why you're different any more 'n I can tell you why there are seven seas to match seven continents, or what wonderful thing I must've done in some past life to earn the honor of being your mama. Some things just _are._ What do you say we try to learn more?" 

Mama was real smart like that. Her answers were never just a 'yes' or a 'no'. An 'I don't know' was always turned into a 'lets find out.' 

They had adventures at different churches, praying for answers. Todd liked the big beautiful Cathedrals with their painted ceilings funny bowls of water the best, but the statues of that poor Jesus dude with his hands and feet pierced by nails scared him a little bit. The synagogues with the curled and dotted writing he couldn't read were great, as well. And the little plain churches on every corner that only opened on Sundays were alright. God (or whoever) never did answer them on that one, but the experience left a lasting impression.

The library was much more useful. He and mama learned all about genetics and mutations. Todd spent many a fascinated hour pouring over books with pictures of two-headed turtles and cats with thumbs. They were pretty cool, he decided, looking at his webbed fingers with new appreciation. He supposed _he_ must be pretty cool, too. 

Being 'cool', of course, did not stop the duo from taking ill. Sometimes the only food they could get their hands on was bad and made them throw up until they trembled. New York winters were bitter, miserable things, especially to a tiny and cold-blooded boy. Even in sickness, mother and son had one another's backs, eking a life out as best that they could. 

"Who's the boy that I love the most?" Eudora would sing in her husky, low smoker's voice, rubbing his shoulders and kissing at his cheeks and nose to thaw them, or carrying him tirelessly on her back when he was too fatigued to walk and too cold to lie still. 

"Todd is!" Todd replied automatically, glad to see her smile under her bulky layers of coats and hats. 

"Who's gonna take care of her tadpole?" Eudora tunelessly continued their little song, waiting for the chorus: 

"Mama is!" 

Todd sang too exuberantly, and had to turn his face away to cough chestily. 

"Winter ain't gonna last forever, Toddles. Remember that. Winter always passes." 

. 

One spring day, when he and his mother were both busy working- her, selling concessions at a baseball game and he, sliding wallets from the back pockets of wealthy-looking men, Todd found himself intrigued by a group of boys. 

Clinging to the underside of the warm metal bleachers with his mucus-sticky hands, he forgot his work as he listened to them speak of school, of girls, of teachers and homework and parents. They seasoned their vocabulary with the kind of bad language his mother would have scolded him pink for using. They used slang he didn't understand, but desperately _wanted_ to. 

There was that word again, the one that curled and stank like a living thing at the base of his skull. It slept often but it woke now, there in the dark underworld of rattly metal seats. _Normal,_ it hissed. _These are normal boys._

He crept closer, wanting, _needing_ to know more about this world they came from, the world of houses and televisions and siblings. Two of the boys looked so alike that they had to be family. The way the smaller propped his shoulder against the other's made Todd's heart feel funny. 

_Lonely._

He was so focused on watching the brothers that he didn't notice another boy in the group look down and catch a glimpse of him until he cried out in shock, spilling his kettle-corn.

"What the _hell_ is that?!" 

Todd, terrified, scuttled for cover and hid in the dark until the game had ended, shaking, heart pounding. But the impression lasted; that longing for boys to call _brother._ It was always there, buried somewhere deep in his heart. 

. 

Eudora's luck, it seemed, was not limitless. 

Todd didn't know exactly how old he was when It happened. They didn't always measure time very well, and he didn't know when his birthday was anyway, but he'd gotten to a stage in his life where he didn't always want to snuggle up with mama when they slept anymore. For warmth in the winter, sure, but now it was late spring. 

He'd fallen asleep in Patches and Dime's pickup truck in a grocery store parking lot, the two men curled in the backseat together with Todd dozing in the front. Mama had gone back to a bed in the Y. She hadn't been feeling good lately; had wanted a soft place to lay down enough to shell out fifteen dollars a night for it. 

Only, when P &D dropped him off at the Y the next morning, he couldn't find her anywhere. Finally, he'd had to just buckle up his courage and nervously ask the lady at the front desk if his mother had left him a message and gone out somewhere. 

"You are Eudora Tolanski's son?" the woman asked, and when he nodded she typed something into her computer, reading notes off the screen. "Yes, your mother was taken by ambulance to Saint Vincent Hospital at two this morning after she collapsed in her room and began convulsing." 

He would forever remember that his first thought was simply, _we can't afford a hospital. We can't afford an ambulance, either._

Todd stared at the woman, a smile frozen on his face. He waited for her to tell him that she was joking, though it wasn't a very funny joke. 

"I'm sorry," the lady added, almost as an afterthought as he continued gawking uncomfortably at her. "Can I help you with anything else?" 

The bus ride to the hospital was a surreal affair. 

Todd couldn't get over the sensation that this was all some tasteless, wild practical joke. But when he pulled the strap for his stop and walked the remaining four blocks to Saint Vincent's, he had another thought. He and mama would just laugh about the mistake later, when he figured out what was going on. It'd definitely be super funny... _Later._

Saint Vincent's was a little rundown, a little small, but it was as bustling as ever when Todd slipped through the front doors before being frozen by a great anxiety. The tall ceilings, the bright lights, the official-looking adults bustling purposefully every which way all made it clear that he Did Not Belong. He felt as though he, in all his rags and dirt-stains, his webbed fingers, his green skin covered in a thin sheen of mucus... Well. He was just too alien, too animal for this strange and sterile place. 

_But._ But mama was here. He had to find her. 

What to do when the going got tough? Hide and observe, of course. It was nothing to climb the nearest wall, push one of the ceiling tiles aside, and crawl into the dusty darkness above. 

Grateful for his tiny and light build, he crawled blindly atop insulation, fiberglass prickling his knees through the holes in his jeans and splinters catching at his bracelets. He eavesdropped as best he could above every room he passed. 

He heard coughs. Cries of pain. The whimpering whine of a newborn being patted into its first breaths. Voices talking in murmurs. Voices raised in great emotion. The whine of small power-tools put into motion, cutting through flesh and bone. 

How _frightening_ a place to be. His coward's heart balked at every new introduction, pounding in his ears. Twice he had to stop, curl up, shake violently until he pulled himself back together again. If he passed by mama, would he even know? 

Voices travelled better through air-vents. He stopped above what he assumed must be an office of some sort; a place that smelled of printer ink and stale coffee rather than dried blood. 

"- been here since the crack of dawn. Some homeless chick-" 

Todd froze. 

"Yeah, have you called the morgue yet?" 

"Not yet. I was told she had next of kin to collect her. A kid?" 

"Poor kid." 

"Maybe he or she's better off now. We'll call social services. It looks like they were living on the streets. Undetected aneurysm on the internal carotid artery -" 

"- yikes. Seizures?" 

"Yep. You know how it goes. They can be fine for years and then just, without any warning, _pop._ Scary, huh? She didn't feel much pain, at least." 

Oh, mama was playing a _very_ silly game with him! Todd's mouth curled in a frightful little smile that more resembled a scream in the dark. Taking a joke so far! He didn't know she had it in her. 

Okay, so he just needed to find her now, that was right. Hospitals had cafeterias, yes? No doubt she'd be there, flirting some dreamy doctor into buying her lunch. She'd sure gotten him good, but he knew she'd never leave him, not for reals. 

( _Mama, don't leave me, don't you leave me..._ ) 

Crawling unsteadily, feeling as dazed and wobbly as he had that time he'd gotten into Big Dave's liquor stash, Todd followed his instincts to the heart of the single-story hospital where voices chattered the loudest and food-smells wafted upwards. 

He crawled around the large space, twitching ceiling tiles aside to peer down, trying to catch a glimpse of mama's poofy black hair and colorful scarves. There were a lot of nurses in blue-green scrubs; a lot of families of patients. Some dour, some wry, all tired. There were cafeteria workers and janitors, but there was no _mama._

The anxiety was growing. It was no surprise when he slipped: his shaking hands lost their grip on the ceiling tile, sending it crashing through a hole in the ceiling and onto a salad bar below. Through the banging and gasps and screams, Todd lost his balance and slipped, legs dangling. He closed his eyes tight and prayed. ( _Mama, mama..._ ) 

Acting fast, a tall and burly nurse abandoned his pizza and climbed onto his table, snatching at Todd. He snagged him by the back of his baggy hoodie and dragged him forcefully down. Todd lost his grip with a cry and was caught securely in strong arms, into which he immediately began struggling; kicking, biting, screaming. 

"Put me down!" he squalled. "Lemme go- just- _lemme_ \--!" 

"My god," the man gasped, catching both his wrists with one hand, pinning his flailing legs to his thick torso with his free arm, and staring down at him in absolute disbelief. "It's a _kid!"_

Things moved pretty quickly after that. Todd, still struggling, was carried into the administration office and deposited into a chair, where two orderlies sat blocking the only door. He could have climbed the walls, but as the ceiling was not paneled in this part of the hospital, this would do nothing but advertise his strangeness to a new audience. 

He curled in on himself and hoarsely answered the doctor's questions as, in the hallway, loud arguments were posed Who to call? Social services? The police? Someone jokingly suggested 'the zoo'. 

_"How old are you?"_

"Don't know." 

_"Where do you live?"_

"Everywhere. Nowhere." 

_"Don't you go to school?"_

"No." 

And finally, the inevitable question as wary strangers inspected his webbed fingers, rubbed thumbs over his rough, bumpy skin, and whispered like a fearful prayer: _"What_ are _you?!"_

At this, Todd looked up, glaring out through his dirty long hair: "Ha! Ha! Ha!" 

. 

He ran away the first moment he had the chance, of course. Hid on the ceiling and snagged a tired janitor's ring of keys with his tongue as he passed by (he was never the wiser, but Todd hid them down the back of his throat for the better part of three hours anyway.) 

Then, at the first opportunity he got, he was out the door and gasping in his freedom. 

The hospital parking garage was full of cars. It was nothing to stow away in the bed of a truck under some tarps, napping there until the owner returned to their vehicle. Then it was just a matter of conjuring the nerve to leap out, garnering some gnarly road-burn as he ducked and rolled the third or fourth time they passed a large bus station he recognized. 

So long as he was doing this- focusing on escape, on survival- he didn't have to think about the things that hurt. ( _I left mama behind. I left her all alone in that place..._ ) 

Stealing food in this busy, bustling place of people coming and going was easy. Stealing money was easier. He'd be fine. He could keep being fine forever, if he just didn't _think_ about anything. ( _Was she scared, dying all alone like that? Had she wanted him to be there?_ ) 

He stole enough money to buy a ticket every night, for rides long enough to last until dawn, and slept on the bus. Everyone was a little odd-looking on overnight busses; so long as he wore a long coat and a cap (both stolen), nobody looked too closely. ( _I'm doing okay, mama. I'm doing okay._ ) 

Sometimes people tried to talk to him. He usually ignored them. It'd been so long since he'd spoken that his very voice seemed to have died. To open his mouth for more than flies made his dry, sun-and wind-burned face feel as though it would crack. He stank, itched, his hair matted with god-knew-what and his bad breath, once escaped from his mouth, could cause others to lurch back violently. 

And he didn't want anyone to look too closely, to see that there was more to him than just a filthy, feral child looking for a relatively safe place to spend the night. There was safety in invisibility. 

But when the old man in sunglasses accidentally nudged his leg with his long, white cane, Todd briefly forgot his vow of silence. 

"Watch it, yo," he grumbled, his voice the throatiest croak of a threat he'd ever heard. 

"Pardon me. I'm blind, you see." The old man chuckled jovially, as though he'd just made the best joke in the world, and chose an empty seat a few rows ahead of Todd. 

Todd would have left the interaction at that, but the man turned to face him so that his voice carried better. He had long white hair spilling from his cap in odd contrast to his scruffy gray stubble. He was big. Most people were big in comparison to Todd, but this old-timer cracked six feet, two hundred pounds easily. It made Todd wary. 

"I've never been on an overnight bus ride before," he remarked, as though he were going to Disneyland in a private jet instead of upstate New York in a piss-reeking, rattely bus that broke down more often than it ran smooth. 

Todd tilted his face away so that his rotting breath might not hit him. "Good for you, I guess." 

The old man frowned, cocking his head. "Why," he remarked. "You're only a child, aren't you?" 

"I'm not suckin' you off," Todd immediately snarled, responding defensively to the question men sometimes proposed to him when they grew aware of his age, his solitude, either in exchange for cash or as an alternative to violence. "So you can just fuck right the fuck off-" 

The old man looked aghast. "Oh no, no no no, where would you get such an idea?" he paused. Considered. "Son, are you alright? Where are your parents?" 

"I'm not your son. And no offense, but askin' stuff like that don't lower your creep factor like, at all. Look, just leave me alone, okay?" 

He turned away, bundling his coat as high as it would go. Tried to rest. Pretended the hard seat under his cheek was his mother's shoulder instead. That his own heartbeat in his ears was hers. 

( _I'm okay, mama. I'm_ still _okay..._ ) 

A few hours of silence passed before the old man spoke again. 

"I'm going to stay with my son and his daughter," he said, jarring Todd from his doze. "I'm not as young as I used to be, and we agreed it was best for all of us to live together. They're picking me up at the station." 

This did not warrent a response. Todd offered none. 

"She's a real sweet girl, my granddaughter. Does real well in school. Are you in school?" 

_Cripes, old dude. Take a hint, willya?_ Todd ignored him. 

Undeterred, the man continued blithely on, voice undulating from the unceasing procession of heavy tires on cracked old road. "Yes, she's a nice girl. Has a lot of friends. She misses her mother, though." 

Todd opened his eyes, catching a glimpse of his reflection in the bus window. He didn't look a thing like mama. He had no photographs of her, and couldn't even take a hint of comfort from a shared nose-shape or eye-color in the mirror. ( _He'd_ left _her..._ ) She was just _gone,_ with nothing to prove she'd ever been there to begin with. 

"What happened to her mom?" Todd asked. 

"Car accident," the old man sighed. "We were devastated Still are." 

_Devastated._ Todd hadn't heard that word before. It sounded good, though; it sounded like a word that fit him. He tried it out in his mind: _I am devastated._

A shudder ran through him then; a sigh starting up from his webbed toes, rattling around in his heart and maybe his soul and leaving him in a big whoosh of a broken little breath. 

He hadn't cried, not once, not since mama died. He struggled for a long moment now, fighting the tears back, but they crept to the surface anyway. The salt stung his chapped skin and washed quickly-cooling tracks through the grime on his face. He struggled not to make a sound, not one single shuddery breath. It was a long time before he trusted himself to speak again. 

"Yo; creepy old man?" 

He perked up, tilting his head so his ear was again towards Todd. "Yes?" 

"Your kid. Where's she go to school, huh?" What sort of school was good for a devastated but pretty good kid with a lot of friends, a kid with a father and a grandfather, but no mother? 

He chuckled good-naturedly. "If you must know, she attends a public school called Bayville High. Pretty nice place, from what she's told me. It's upstate a-ways." 

High school, huh? Todd thought again of those boys from a long ago baseball game, of their talk of teachers, of homework. Were they now going to high school, too? The doctors had asked him whether he attended school, and he'd noticed their surprise at his deflective answer. He knew it was what kids were _supposed_ to do. What _he_ was supposed to do. 

"Okay," Todd said, resting his cheek against the lightly vibrating glass of the bus window. He nodded to himself. "Okay." He knew where Bayville was; nice place, kinda ritzy. Might be worth a little look around. 

. 

"Bye, church," Todd fondly patted the stone wall of the abandoned church he'd been squatting in ever since he'd found it in the woods. It was an old thing, unstable and crumbling apart. Probably built back when the Mormons had traversed the country in covered wagons. "Keep doin' your churchy thing while I'm gone, yo." 

It was also, unofficially, his home. He slept in the bell-tower, watching the stars and clouds roll by, though he was starting to find himself shivering by morning. Time to set about stealing more blankets before autumn hit, then. 

Shouldering his bag, he started on the long walk from the woods and into town on his way to school as the sun began to rise. He did this every morning now. If he got there early enough, he'd manage to snag some free breakfast in the cafeteria. If not, he'd just swipe a lunchbox or two from one of the rich-looking kids. Sometimes he even took a quick shower in the boys' locker room, but he avoided it when possible. Soap just made his sensitive skin sting and itch and produce an inconvenient amount of mucus for _days._

But it didn't matter. He was a toad. He bounced. He could bounce back from anything, even total devastation. He'd proved it to himself. With the weapon of a laugh he could bend, twist, adapt, evolve, outrun _survive_ anything. And if this didn't work out? So what? He'd skip town. Looking out for number one was his only priority anymore, and he had to be okay with that. 

School was a _riot._ It was full of people, most of them his age. There were lots of rules- some of them he followed, sometimes; most of them he didn't bother. He liked some of it, though. He liked having unlimited access to library books. He liked having people to talk to, though they didn't always like talking to him. He was called Toad or Toady for how he looked, but figured there were worst things to be called. 

He liked the weird principal, Raven Darkholme, most of all, though she got mad when he called her Ray-Ray every time he was sent to her office. 

She'd given him the usual shocked up-and-down glance the first time they'd met. Todd was used to it. _Most_ people stared at them; he guessed it was just because he didn't look like anyone else in the whole wide world, not even a little. 

She didn't seem put off by the way he looked, though. Not even when the other kids beat him up some. Had even been pretty interested by it, asking him all kinds of questions about what he could do. She made him feel special. Interesting, instead of just gross and a little freaky. ( _"Have you always been this way, Mr. Tolanski?"_ ) 

She was good to him; a real sweetie when she wasn't being all grumpy and shouty. Helped him navigate all the gaps in his education (he knew basic math and how to read and write, but that was about it when it came to school stuff). She'd enrolled him in the computers club, which he'd taken to right away. She even paid a monthly tab on his student ID so he could buy all the hot school lunch he wanted. Maybe it was her personal charity project to help homeless kids out or something, but who cared? Free food! 

He maybe had a teensy little crush on her, but that was top secret. He had crushes on a lot of people. The feelings came and went like fickle tides. He didn't let it bother him. 

Today, Todd was in a particularly good mood. Old Ray-Ray had asked him to come to her office before class to show him something she said was real important. That usually meant she'd give him a soda and some cookies. He wondered what was so important. It was fun to be considered necessary for something _important._

He whistled a little, feeling jolly as he hopped long blocks around a fancy neighborhood that was just starting to wake up, humming a tune his mama used to sing with him. _Who's the boy that I love the most...?_

It was gonna be a great day.


	3. Don't Laugh at Me! (Fred Dukes)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Guy don't need no sense to be a nice fella. Seems to me sometimes it jus' works the other way around. Take a real smart guy and he ain't hardly ever a nice fella.”  
> ― **John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men**

They'd burned the feeling out of both of Fred's palms. Charred the first few layers of skin right off, leaving the remaining flesh all shiny and tight and swollen like two ripe-to-bursting beefsteak tomatoes. Sara Jo hissed sharp between her teeth when she saw them; said Fred might never gain back his original dexterity.

Well. ' _They_.' It could be argued that Fred had done it all to himself, all by his lonesome. After all, nobody had _made_ him lift that junky ol' Mustang. He could have just let it hit him. He could have thrown the car too, though. Knew he could. Had thought about it; arms extended above his head, car facing down with back wheels still spinning high to the sky like it was doing a nosedive into the St Jude community pool, only _Fred_ was the pool and-- 

And. Anyway. 

Exposed engines run very, very hot. Especially rickety old sparking engines comprised of more duct tape than metal; shocks that the teens had been pushing faster, _faster_ , chasing a giant boy down the muddy path until he just plum couldn't take it anymore... 

Fred Dukes was thirteen years old; six feet, nine inches tall; and at the time of The Incident, tipped the scales at three hundred and forty-two pounds. The Dukes's had to special-order Fred's shoes and pants and underoos from the Big n Tall store in New York City. His hands, when he spread his fingers wide, were equal in circumference to the dinner plates Mama Dukes received as a wedding present from Auntie Eunice. The nice plates that they only took out for Thanksgiving or Christmas; blush-colored and painted with yellow and blue hyacinths. 

He'd been twelve when he started noticing that he was Different. Sure, he was a big boy, but in his tiny, cream-and-corn-fed hometown, there was no shortage of big and strong yellow-haired boys. Girls, too. Mabel Sue just down the dirt road, who never grew taller than five foot two, whom Fred was maybe just the littlest, _tiniest_ bit sweet on, had biceps bigger than half the St Jude's football team. 

The point remained: Fred was a _Big Boy._ And try as his parents and aunties might to say he'd just hit his growth spurt young, he knew he wasn't done growing yet. 

St Jude high, which doubled as the church building on nights and Sundays, was so small that high school students of all grades shared one classroom and nobody thought twice in September when it stood near-empty; all the kids gone and earning their keep during cotton-picking season. 

Fred wasn't _that_ Different at first. He was just a big boy. A strong boy. "A good boy; just a little slow," he heard his mama and aunties-- all stocky redheads who laughingly referred to themselves as 'little red hens'-- clucking while canning peaches and jams together at the stove. And, when they saw him walking past: "Freddie! Come take this rhubarb pie to sweet Widow Jennings, bless her heart, won't you? You know you'll get a glass of orangeade for your troubles!" 

At first, his extreme strength impressed his family. He was the one the town called upon when a tractor sank into mud. When a cow went into labor and the calf got all tangled up inside her and had to be pulled out knobbly legs first. (He'd cried tears of joy the first time he'd held a calf straight from the hopper, not minding at all that she streaked blood on his t-shirt. She'd lowed and stirred feebly in his arms, then velvet-lipped at his fingers hoping for milk, all huge brown eyes blinking slow. Fred had up and kissed that new life smack between her eyes, then walked around and kissed her mama, too.) 

That kinda strength was acceptable. Useful. "You could be a wrestler when you're older, like André the Giant on the TV," Daddy'd grunted over morning doughnuts and coffee. "Make some money for the family." 

But Fred didn't much care for wrestling. Nor boxing. Nor football. It was too durn _mean,_ was what it was. People pounding the heck out of each other for no good reason at all? He couldn't do it! No thank you _sir_ , and pass the butter! 

"You gotta do _somethin'_ , Freddie," Mama said nervously, frowning at the C's and D's on his report card. "You ain't smart enough to be a businessman." 

"Can't I be a farmer; like Daddy and Uncle Ross?" Fred was good at farmwork. But he knew the answer in Mama's uncertain eyes. Saw her pouring over bills; cutting coupons; sighing deeply over the cost of Fred's clothes. Their town had problems with money, and it was only getting worse by the year between the droughts and the flooding and the fact that everybody who could do so was moving away to Atlanta and Savannah and Augusta. Soon St. Jude would go the way of the ghost towns. 

"Freddie!" Mama said every night at dinner. "You gotta start eating less! We can't afford to feed you so much." So he stopped taking seconds; went to bed every night with a growling tummy. Anything to make that frown-line disappear from between Mama's brows. He wasn't the _only_ kid at school with a hungry gut; far from it. He stole sips of raw milk when he helped Uncle Ross hook up the milkers; ate the misshapen carrots and potatoes straight from the ground, greens and dirt and all. Sometimes he even stuffed fresh-picked cotton speckled with hard black seeds down his throat when he couldn't stand the empty ache a second longer, and it was (almost) enough. 

"What if I was a strongman, like at the circus?" he asked Mama, helping her pick blackberries in Auntie Janet's backyard, filling their pails ever-so-slowly and staining their fingers dark with juice. Mama's nose wrinkled in disgust. 

"The _circus!_ " Her voice always went high when he'd displeased her. "With all the foreigners, and-- and the atheists, and the mutants, and the _homosexuals!_ Don't you say such a thing ever again, Freddie. You're a good, Christian boy." 

Fred didn't know what an 'atheist' or a 'homosexual' was, but Pastor Charlie sure did like to prattle on about how bad they were, so it was probably pretty serious. "Well..." he tried, real cautious-like. "What about the monster truck show, then?" 

The show came to town twice a year. Fred, along with most of the kids, loved watching them set up their tents and concession booths. And the _trucks!_ Big and shiny and candy-colored, with tires thicker around than Fred's waist; tall as his chest. They rumbled the ground like dinosaurs, and Fred thought it was all wonderful; from the stench of diesel fumes to the drivers; huge men and women in glorious spangled costumes. They travelled the states like nomads in the bible, or lone wolves in the comic books passed among the girls and boys at Fred's school. Grand, modern-day superheroes in capes and spandex with rainbow-colored hair. A world where people were allowed to be shamelessly, absurdly, delightfully, thrillingly _big_ and _loud_ and _Different_ and _too darn much_. A world where maybe, for once, Fred wouldn't be _too big to be allowed._

Mama sniffed disparagingly, pushing the wide brim of her floppy hat out of her eyes. "Get those silly ideas out of your head right now, Frederick Junior. I won't have my only child parading like some half-witted fool. You belong right here with your family." 

(Funny how, just a few months after that conversation, she was saying the exact opposite. Stared down her nose at the boy with the black-and-red hands blistering and cracking under the running tap water. (" _Just get out. You're no son of mine. You don't belong here. I won't have some devil-touched freak in_ my _home._ ")) 

Bullies weren't unheard of. Fred was a heavy boy quick to emotion, with a learning disorder and an innocence untapped by time. The schoolwide hunger made tempers short and bitterness high. He ignored the teasing when he could, but he was reactive by instinct. How could he _not_ get mad when he was teased? For him, anger was connected at the hip with crying; he couldn't experience one without the other. He'd be hollering up a storm long before he realized tears were rolling down his squishy cheeks: slow, and then all at once.

_"Boo-hoo-hoo! Freddie's a big, fat baby!"_ the kids would tease, as he blundered and stomped and tried to chase them away, his already poor vision blurred by tears. They asked him if he was a fruit 'cuz he liked flowers and rainbows and kittens and ribbons. Called him 'Lennie Small' after their class read _Of Mice and Men._ Chased him around, laughing and laughing and laughing. "Fatty, fatty! Tell us about the rabbits, Fatty Freddie! _Tell us 'bout those_ rabbits!" 

"Don't you _laugh_ at me!" he insisted, time and again, face sunset-red and lips wibbling like a foolhearted ninny's. 

Nobody ever, ever listened. 

Which led, in its crooked and winsome way, to the Mustang. 

He'd only been following paw prints down a dirt path. They might have been a mouse's. Fred imagined himself a tracker in a Dundee hat and boots as he marched the trail. He'd find that mouse and then... Then, well, wouldn't that just be something! (His plans seldom extended past that first step.) 

The putter-stall of an approaching vehicle didn't immediately set off Fred's alarmbells. This wasn't much a common-travelled path, it being tucked between Uncle Ross's cotton fields and sweet Widow Jennings's trailer and all, but sometimes people would get turned around and use it as a shortcut to the church-slash-school. 

So Fred walked on, eyes to the ground, following those mouse-prints smaller than the pad of his littlest finger. He imagined the animal, gray and soft and dancing among the weeds and ruts in the road like something out of a picture-book, with maybe a nut or a seed packed in the pocket of its cheek. 

The engine behind him caught at last-- he heard it, sputter, sputter, _pop!_ \-- and roared to life, so he scooted to the side of the path to let it pass. 

Only, it didn't pass, but stayed just behind him; speeding, slowing, speeding, slowing. 

Wondering if they were in some kinda pickle, Fred looked over his shoulder and recognized the driver and passenger: Jessie White and Jonah Westcott in Jessie's daddy's '71 Ford Mustang, the blue one that'd lost its hood ages ago and so all the hoses and pumps and car-guts lay exposed to the world. The boys inside were grinning wide as jack-o-lanterns. 

Nervousness began to take root in Fred's belly. These older boys were meaner than snakes. He'd hollered at them a few days ago for catching and squishing Pickerel frogs in Jasper's Hollow, just holding them in their hands and squeezing and squeezing and squeezing until _splat--_! 

They'd laughed at Fred for crying at that, too, but they sure as shucks hadn't been laughing when Fred had picked Jessie up by the front of his shirt and thrown him a couple feet in the air like he was a boy-sized baseball. Jessie'd knocked his head pretty good on a rock. There'd been some blood. Fred had been real scared of getting in trouble for that, but the incident hadn't been mentioned again. 

(Fred could have squeezed them like they'd squeezed those frogs, though. Somewhere, deep down, he knew it. Only maybe now _they_ knew it, too, because suddenly it seemed everyone in town was avoiding him; even the store-owners and Auntie Eunice and...) 

... And so it led to this: The car. The path. Freddie increasing his strolling to walking, then pushing himself to walk a little _faster..._

The Mustang idled alongside him for a moment, and he refused to look at Jessie or Jonah. He knew the cruelty he'd see on their faces; the same looks they'd worn when tormenting the poor little frogs. Only difference now was the butterfly-bandage above Jessie's brow and the ugly yellow bruise beside his temple, and Fred refused to feel guilty for that. 

The car slowed, and Fred pulled on ahead, only to yelp when it veered off the driving path and onto the walking path after him, wheels spraying the mud that soaked Fred's too-tight pants. It was close, too close, and he nearly tripped trying to side-step it. He heard laughter; the crank of a window rolling down. 

"Hey, Freddie!" Jonah called, and Fred made the mistake of looking over his shoulder and right into those sea-green eyes; saw that curl of a lip over teeth stained brown with chewing tobacco. "Tell me 'bout those rabbits?" 

There was something about the way he said it-- real quiet and coy and knowing-- that chilled Fred to the bone. He remembered how _Of Mice and Men_ had ended. Of course he remembered: He'd cried when Mrs. Gilly read it aloud to their class, same as he always did when she read sad books. Lennie had been shot through the head by his own friend because he was too big, too dangerous to live. Mrs. Gilly had then led a class discussion on whether Lennie's friend George had made the right choice in shooting the simple man, and the majority had voted yes. 

Fred wondered now if there was maybe a gun or two in Jessie's daddy's Mustang, hidden just out of sight. But that was just silly. These boys were only playing. They wouldn't _really_ \-- 

Jessie flooded the engine. 

Freddie didn't waste time thinking anymore. He _ran_ like a prey animal, trampling brush and dodging mudstuck roots, trying to keep close to the red maples where the car couldn't quite reach. There were whoops and jeers now: the sounds of two boys who's daddies took them out hunting often enough to know an approaching bloodspill when they smelled one. 

"Widow Jennings!" Fred panted when he reached her little trailer and its familiar porch-swing; the same one he'd spent half his early childhood sitting in. She used to babysit him while Mama went out for groceries or to do her banking. 

Fred waved frantically and was relieved as peaches in spring to see a little bespectacled face pop up in the front picture window. Surely now he'd be saved. Widow Jennings would totter outside and wave her cane at the Mustang; tell the boys to go on home now before she called their parents. "Widow Je--!" 

She drew the beaded curtain on her window so that it fell, blocking her view of the outside. Allowing the terror to continue without lifting a finger to stop it. 

Disbelief swept through Fred. He'd always been told to go to grown-ups he knew and trusted if he were ever having any sort of trouble, that they'd do their best to play fair and save the day. But now, when he needed her most... 

The engine just at his heels roared again, hungry and eating up miles of road like a kid slurping down a fruit rollup. There was no time to stop and despair. Fred could only continue running, though he knew now that he was being herded like a bison on the prairie. Soon there'd be nowhere to go but into the open cotton fields, and then they could just run him over, if that'd been their goal all along, and nobody would stop them. 

Nobody... But Fred. 

Suddenly knowing what he had to do, Fred felt the world around him calm, still like the eye in a hurricane. He turned. Met Jessie's gaze. Grabbed the front bumper, gave a showman's bright, toothy, triumphant smile... And _lifted._

. 

It was the mohawk that sold him.

Well, the cape, too, but mostly the mohawk. 

Sara Jo the driver buzzed his hair herself; showed him how to gel it; how to mix Kool-Aid powder with cheap conditioner to dye it wild colors. Sara Jo was maybe the biggest lady Fred had ever met. Not so big as Fred himself, of course, but just as strong as all the guys who drove monster trucks in their travelling show. She told him that when she was a kid, everyone-- her parents; her friends-- thought that she was a boy. When she told them she wasn't, they got real upset and kicked her out. She'd been driving trucks ever since. 

"You need a new look," she told the thirteen-year-old when he'd tracked them down, dirty and hungry from days of on-foot travel. She'd stood on tiptoe to wipe the tears from his eyes, listening to him explain his story in little fits and gasps. "Fuck the man!" 

"Y-yeah. Fudge the man." 

And okay, so fudging 'the man' using big hair and a swoopy cape that snapped the wind and more glitter than anybody could shake a stick at sure was _fun,_ but it didn't stop the emptiness that spawned its gloppy little eggs in his gut night after night to hatch and spread into a monster no Fred Sandwich Special-- the kind with the olives and the chili and the banana peppers and, well, everything he could find-- could hope to cure. 

And it filled him up with nothing; only that was the opposite of filling, it was _draining,_ like a plug pulled in a bathtub, sucking down all the nonsense like happiness and dreams and the zip that made Fred, _Fred_. It slurped the color out of the world, leaving him to understand just _why_ wolves howled at the moon sounding like their hearts were fit to break. 

He'd have howled too if it would have done any good. But he couldn't howl, so he cried instead. Big ol' boo-hoo-hoo's, until lights went on in the trailers around him and Jimbo would say "Jesus firetrucking _Christ,_ " and Eula would demand, "what is _wrong_ with that boy?!" 

Danny ran the show. He was the one who figured out where to go, and talked to the guys in charge about where it was okay to set up and where to camp. What papers to sign, and who handed over the cash to whom. It was also he who'd decided that Fred should stay in Sara Jo's RV instead of with any of the other travelers. 

("Why?" Fred had heard Sara Jo asking with a scoff, after his hands had been bandaged and he was pretending to sleep on the floor beneath her table. "Just cuz I'm a girl, I'm supposed to know how mutant kids work?" 

"Pull your head outta your ass," Danny'd growled in return. "It's cuz you're the one he seems to feel safe with. Step up to the plate, SJ, he's _thirteen_.") 

"Why're you so nice to me?" Fred asked Sara Jo one night, when he saw her sitting on the stoop of her trailer, smoking those sweet-smelling cigarettes she favored. The floor creaked under his every step, and he lived in fear that one day he'd break the whole durned RV, so he stepped careful as could be. 

Sara Jo looked at him and blew out a perfect ring of blueish smoke. Without all her makeup and jewelry and colorful wigs, she looked almost small. 

Then she patted the stoop next to her in invitation. It bowed under his weight when he sat, forcing them to sit shoulder to shoulder, butts half-hanging off. 

"I don't really know the answer to that question," she said. "Cuz despite my excellent resting bitch face, I don't actually like being mean all that much? 'Cuz you're a person? Cuz we're roommates for a l'il while, til one of us finds someplace better to go? Cuz you're a funny kid, and I like you?" 

It was a better answer than Fred could have expected. He accepted it, waving away her cigarette when she offered it. "I like you too," he said, though it was kind of a mushy thing to say. People from St. Jude didn't go around sayin' stuff like that, not hardly. ' _I love you_ 's were reserved for mamas and aunties and sweethearts only. But if travelling the states with a caravan of oddballs had taught Fred anything, it was that there were all sorts of types in the world; all sorts of ways to be. He became more aware with every passing day the enormity of all he didn't know, and it only made him excited for more. 

"Open roads, Freddie Dukes," Sara Jo said at last, stubbing the butt of her cigarette on the step and flicking it away. "To wherever life takes us." 

"Open roads," Fred agreed softly. 

Things became a little easier after that. Fred didn't have to cry as much. Sometimes he could even smile. When his fourteenth birthday rolled around, the troop even made him a lumpy birthday cake, covered in green icing and full of chocolate chips. He did his chores and worked with the team and learned things no school could ever teach him, though it was lonely sometimes being the only kid around a bunch of grown-ups, even if he did tower over the tallest among them. 

Sure, it still felt like something was missing, but Fred suspected he'd always feel like that. He could bear it. 

The best was this: The dull roar noise of an excited crowd. The delightful stink of gasoline. The buttery slickness of popcorn. The cool, shimmy slickness of his silver nylon bodysuit and his dramatic, swooshing cape. The tickle of butterflies in Fred's tummy-- happy ones, excited ones. He was born for this. He loved, _loved_ to perform for a crowd. 

Fred smiled proudly as Danny on his mic riled up the Texan crowd; got them to cheer after his every sentence. Fred's eyes were drawn to a short, hairy man beside a pretty, redheaded teenage girl in the front row of the packed audience, their eyes both fixed intently on him. Feeling bold, Fred blew a cheeky kiss towards the girl. 

She didn't catch it or scoff or smile or react in any way like girls usually did to his showmanship; just fixed rather unnerving eyes, green as Pippin apples, on him, like she was trying to look into his very soul. Fred could feel his palms beginning to sweat, so he quickly wiped them off, ripping his gaze off of the strange, still pair in the sea of motion. Forget those two! There was always a couple weirdos in every crowd. 

Still, he felt their stares like a physical weight as he stood between purring trucks, snapping his cape off in a flash.

"-- the world's _strongest_ teenager; Fred 'The Blob' Dukes!" 

Fred grinned at Danny's magnified words. They'd agreed on the nickname after he and Sara Jo had binged classic scary films. ("It's you," Sara Jo had said, chewing her way through a handful of cheesy popcorn, pointing at the screen with one manicured fingernail. 

"Yeah, well. You're Nosferatu. Cuz you _suck!_ " Fred had giggled in turn. "Geddit? Cuz... Vampires? Suck?" 

Sara Jo had thrown her popcorn at him as he laughed so hard his belly jiggled.) 

Fred turned his focus now on the monster trucks on either side of him, feeling Sara Jo grinning to his left and Jimbo at his right. This was just a little starter trick; something to warm the crowd up. Get them amped for the _real_ deal and empty their pockets on snacks and souvenirs. 

When the vehicles tried to back away from him, he gripped the chains attached to their winches, flexed the impressive muscles in his back, and _pulled,_ leaping nimbly to land atop, one foot on each hood when their front bumpers kissed. Under his weight, the tires deflated. Sara Jo gave him a thumbs up as the crowd went wild. 

This was pretty darn swell. It all suited him _fine._ He bowed to the left; bowed to the right-- and lost his footing. 

Golly. It'd sure been a long time since somebody had laughed at him like this; pointed their fingers and jeered and _laughed_. The whole durn crowd turned on a dime. In Fred's mind, their unfamiliar faces were replaced by those of schoolmates from long ago. The calloused, never-quite-healed skin on his palms twitched and itched and burned. He felt the slippery metal of an old Ford's rusty engine under his fingertips-- 

"Don't _laugh_ at me!" the Blob boomed in tearful rage. 

. 

"Don't you want a normal life, Freddie?" the strange woman from the crowd asked, and Fred really had to stop and think about that. 

She'd showed him that she was like him the moment she'd gotten him away from the crowd. Her very skin had rippled and morphed and deepened, until she looked more like what Fred considered a 'mutant' to be-- the sort of people they showed on TV from time to time to shock and frighten. 

She'd given him snacks, too. A soda. Some cookies. This 'Raven' chick seemed alright by him; sure. 

Fred leaned his head back against the tent wall, pride still stinging from the incident. "I don't know if there's such a thing as 'normal' for me. You? You can look like whoever you want. You can be big, but you don't have to be. It's better here. At least I make _money_ off'a bein' different." 

"You're telling me you're okay with this?" Raven asked, her golden eyes cutting right to the quick of Fred's insecurities. "Being disrespected? Being _laughed_ at? They love you when you're good, Fred, but when you're down, they love it even more. They love to see the big guys fall." 

Fred hung his head. Stared at his dusty shoes. Everybody teased him for his size; even his friends. Sometimes even Sara Jo. He didn't see how that would be any different elsewhere, though, and he said as much aloud. 

"Fred, join something bigger than yourself," Raven pressed. "Come somewhere you'll never be hungry. Where your skills will be respected. Appreciated! You'll be with other kids like you who _understand_ what it means to grow up different... You want to be understood, don't you, Freddie? You'd be a _star_ ; a real one. _Nobody_ could replace the immovable, unbreakable Fred." 

... Those things sure sounded a heck of a lot better than being 'The Blob.' 

"You could go back to school," she continued. "We could get you some real help. That way, even if you don't like working with us, you'll still have something to fall back on. An education you could use to find a real job. We'll help you, Fred, just lend us your skill." 

Well. The chick sure knew how to drive a good bargain. Danny himself would'a been impressed by her sweet-talkery. 

She took his massive hand and flipped it around; ran the pad of one blue thumb over the roughened edges of his scar. He saw genuine sorrow and sympathy in her expression. 

"If you're in a team of mutants," she said, and her voice lost its formal edge. When she looked at him, her eyes burned with sincerity. "No human would hurt you without repercussions. An attack on one mutant is an attack on all of us." 

That... Oh. He hadn't realized how long he'd wanted, _needed_ someone to say that to him. To reassure that it wouldn't happen again. Not unchecked, at least. 

Looking at her, Fred felt quite young, and very alone. He tried to shrug off the feelings with a toothy Blob-smile. 

"It looks like Fred Dukes is gonna be goin' to Bayville," Fred decided, in as confident a voice as he could muster.


	4. Which Way Home? (Maximoff Twins)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One is the loneliest number, worse than two.  
> It's just no good anymore since you went away.  
> Now I spend my time just making rhymes of yesterday.  
>  **\- Harry Nilsson, One**

Bold Wanda with her shock of ink-dark hair was the first to greet the world. She looked around to ensure all was acceptable, and then she screeched at the top of her brand-new lungs. She'd decided already that she didn't much care for this separation from her little brother, thank you very much, and would not be satisfied until everyone in the room knew it.

But the second baby didn't come, and didn't come, and then the doctors and the nurses began to worry.

Wanda did not once stop her howling; not while she was washed, not while she was swaddled, not while she was passed from one set of soothing, familial arms to another.

Eventually Magda was taken from the small, cheerful room of her partner and her daughter and her sisters and her granny into a larger, colder room; all metal and glass, and doctors shrouded in cotton and masks.

There were, even then, safer methods of cesarean that severed less flesh; spilled less blood. But the head surgeon was old and old-fashioned both, and not yet familiar with modern techniques. The traditional way had worked a thousand times before, he reasoned. There was no reason to believe it would not work now. Magda's lower belly was split three ways to make room for grasping hands. The form pulled from her was wet and red and small... And still.

So, so still.

"Oh," Magda gasped, as she was stitched and stapled and molded back into one person-shaped piece. "Oh, please--" She'd never wanted anything in her life more than to see this tiny thing take a breath, even if just the one. The scrap of life was passed from one set of gloved hands to the next; his back vigorously rubbed; then his front. His throat was checked for blockage, but none was found.

"Give him to me." Magda's resolve was iron strong.

The tiny body was placed on her breast, and she stroked its cheek with a single finger.

 _Please,_ she begged; in English, in Vlax Romani, in what little Polish she'd picked up from Erik. _Please. I want you here._

Slowly, so slowly, the body on her chest shifted; stirred. His eyes opened, and she gasped at their beauty. It looked as though flakes of sky had fallen and caught in his lashes.

Pietro breathed more easily after that initial scare.

Back in the first room, Wanda's screams were beginning to split the eardrums and patience of all who waited. She'd suck no fingers; theirs or her own. No arms, no matter how soft, could bring her comfort. The jokes-- surely she'd grow up to become a famous opera singer, at this rate!-- began to wear thin. Bunica Ethelinda's hearing aid began to shrill.

Dark glances were shot at the tall, pale man by the window overlooking the rolling green hills of Zamość. Aloof, unsociable Erik, though strong and handsome, was thought an inadequate match for young, pretty Magda. He never danced at their parties, and none could recall ever seeing him smile. What their girl saw in him, they could never guess.

But he'd gone and spilled seed in fertile soil, hadn't he? He could damn well help out now.

Văr Vano-- younger and more foolhardy than most-- dared approach to thrust the inconsolable bundle into the still man's arms.

"Here you go, _tătic,_ " said Vano, with forced joviality. "Time to do your part, eh?"

Erik blinked at the solid weight he now held, as though just remembering where he was and why. A furrow formed on his brow as he examined the thing he held, like he couldn't quite puzzle her out; couldn't understand what a baby _was_ ; much less why it screamed. Then he brought her to the level of his face and looked her dead in the eye. "Wanda Marya Maximoff," Erik Lehnsherr sternly told his daughter. "You will stop this foolishness at once."

Magda's family, both blood and otherwise, exchanged knowing smirks. This strange Polish man with eyes like first winter's snow believed he could command cats and the sea if he thought he could earn a baby's-- a _Maximoff's--_ obedience.

But, for the first and perhaps only time in Wanda's life, she listened. She quieted, new eyes bleary and squinting as she tried to take in the face before her. She reached a clumsy hand and pressed it to her father's cheek.

Because he was not yet the man he would become, he turned his head and he kissed her palm, soft as spun sugar. Then he tucked her hand back into her blankets, and he held her under one arm, and both were still and solemn until the surgeon and a dishevelled Magda returned.

Erik's eyes fell on the blanketed shape she held on her chest; on the exhausted, pained expression she wore. The two locked gazes, and Magda gave a single dip of her chin.

Erik nodded back.

And it was alright, for once, that he didn't dance; that he didn't cheer or laugh or emote in any way expected of a new father. Those present swore he had a light; a kindness to his eyes they'd never seen on him before.

#

Erik's research about newborns had taught him to expect them to be small; and twins, smaller still. But Pietro was a full two pounds smaller than his sister; and sickly, besides.

"Sometimes it's just like that," a helpful nurse shrugged. "Keep him fed, keep him warm, but don't be too surprised if he doesn't make it."

When Magda, muzzy on medication, found him shirtless in bed with both twins asleep on his chest, she cocked her head. "What are you doing?"

"Skinship is vital to proper brain development." Erik's arm was beginning to tire holding a book above his head, but there was no better way to hold it with these breathing lumps on top of him. "This is an ancient practice. My brain is supposedly being flooded with oxytocin as we speak."

Magda snorted. She was often amused by what he had to say. "Whatever, weirdo."

He watched as she gingerly climbed into bed beside him, holding tight to her new sutures beneath her nightgown. "Ow," she whimpered. "Ow; mother _fucker."_

She grabbed for Erik's nearest arm and pushed it out of the way, then made herself comfortable at his side, resting her head on his stomach. She'd never once seemed intimidated by the man she'd taken for a lover; not by his age, not by his standing. Not by the numbers tattooed on his forearm, though she'd correctly guessed their origin.

Wanda stirred in her sleep, and Magda kissed her soft cheek until she settled again. Then she kissed Erik's chest, too, and stroked a gentle finger down Pietro's bare back, tugging at a wrinkle in his diaper.

"You have no regrets?" Erik confirmed, careful, always careful with each word when speaking any language that was not his own. He'd offered to pay for a pregnancy termination when she'd come to him eight months prior, plastic stick in hand, olive complexion chalky in shock. "You know they'll likely not be... Ordinary."

_Not like you._

Exhaustion was already dragging her under, and her response was nothing more than a soft, "Mmm."

Erik sighed and rested a hand in her thick, unruly hair, pushing it from her eyes. Magda must have been just at sleep's door when she whispered, "Love you," so quietly Erik might just have imagined it.

He stared at her, at the face he'd been so taken by; the prominent nose and pointed chin and high cheeks and full lips; the faint white lines beside her eyes that indicated a lifetime of laughter and smiles. They'd never said such words to one another before.

On his chest, Pietro stirred; shifted, snuffled. Wanda, as always, moved right with him. The two were like magnets, if only to one another. If one moved, so did the other, even in dreams.

Erik wasn't certain if it was the oxytocin he was feeling just then, but the sensation of three additional heartbeats against his skin soothed him in an unfamiliar way. He set his book down and closed his eyes.

He'd thought to rest only a moment, but several hours must have passed. He was woken suddenly by a scream-- not of hunger or fear, but one of true, splitting agony. Wanda shrieked like she was dying.

Erik sat up with a gasp, hands flying to each body atop him, and knew immediately what was wrong. His son was still; unbreathing and cool to the touch.

With shaking hands, Erik rubbed Pietro's little back, imitating what he'd seen the doctors do to Wanda. His front, too. Erik's research had taught him that kittens were licked to encourage organ usage; that kangaroo joeys were born so underdeveloped they dwelled within their mother's pouch for months after birth, existing in a strange limbo.

His research had not taught him what to do if his son died on top of him.

His distress was more than he could have anticipated. He hardly heard Wanda's shrieks fade to whimpers.

Magda, who had in her sleep rolled away from him, dozed in a medication-induced haze. This nightmare was his and Wanda's to face alone.

It'd been a long time long time since Erik had lost control, but now the bed collapsed to one side as its frame warped. The glass in the window cracked audibly when its holster twisted. On the dresser, Magda's bowl of earrings rattled and clacked.

Erik searched, with hands and powers alike, for anything to hold onto. And in the dark he found a circulatory system; tiny and fragile and new, standing out like a red beacon in his minds eye.

Erik was not a begging man, but tonight he was not himself. Tonight, his thoughts were this: _Please,_ and, _I want you here!_

Unsure what else to do, Erik _pushed_ at the iron in Pietro's blood, forcing the liquid along its intended path; through the heart and out again. Again and again until the cooling body warmed; until he felt the ribs under his palm expand and contract.

Pietro took a breath; another; another-- and then his heart began to beat on its own. Haltingly, at first, and then with regularity.

Wanda's whimpers ceased as she returned to her dreams, but Erik did not sleep again that night.

The next morning, a blood clot worked its way into Magda's heart. She survived the heart attack, and the one that followed several months later, but each successive time, Erik watched her fade away like sand through his fingers.  

#

Spring became fall; then winter. Summer flipped the world over; once and then twice more.

Shortly after the twins third birthday (they'd celebrated on the neighbor's farmland with Magda's extensive family and plenty of apple cake), Magda let herself into the small home they'd made for themselves, leaning heavily on her cane with a package under one arm.

"The madman must pay a fortune mailing all the way from the states," she grouched, watching as her partner struggled to lace their son into his sneakers.

"Charles again?"

"Who else?" She held up the package to show his branded X insignia on the brown paper, then sank with a huff into the wheelchair she'd been relying on more and more as the toll on her heart worsened. "Your boyfriend is _persistent_."

Her cane skidded on the bunched rug as she settled, and she narrowly avoided smacking herself in the mouth. " _Mother_ fucker."

"You called?" Erik asked smoothly, holding Pietro's ankle as the boy struggled and flopped, finally managing to slip a sneaker onto one tiny foot.

Magda stared at him for a moment, then released a single whoop of laughter. "You've been saving that one up, haven't you? Bastard."

"My parents were married, actually. If you want a bastard, consult your son." Erik waggled Pietro's foot at her.

" _I_ want to be a bastard," Wanda pouted. This was the twin's newest phase: if one had something, the other demanded it, too.

Hoping to use this tactic against them, Erik tried, "Pietro, why don't you put your other shoe on by yourself? Wanda is wearing _her_ shoes."

Wanda smiled cherubically at the praise, then pulled her shirt off over her head.

Erik sighed and rubbed at his tired eyes. He'd been up late that night, because Wanda had been up late, which meant that _Pietro_ was up late. Four bedtime stories hadn't been enough; neither had boring, late-night television. Finally he'd sung to them; half-forgotten songs from his own youth. The three napped on the sofa together until Erik revived enough to carry his offspring to bed.

"Dearest, I suspect we are raising nudists," he drily informed Magda, who was tearing into the package.

"Oh!" she said brightly, holding up the new selection of children's clothing sent their way; all miniature versions of high New York fashion. Just as brightly, she declared, "It's hideous!"

Erik was startled into a peal of laughter, folding over on himself. He was not often moved to such emotion, but something about her flat declaration and his old friend and enemy's complete lack of understanding of children (imagine dressing a toddler in charcoal mesh and padded shoulders and seed pearls!) in combination with his overtired state had tears rolling down his cheeks.

"Right," he said, when he was again in control of himself. He straightened. Cleared his throat. "Pietro, don't make me tell you twice. Put your shoes on. Wanda, your shirt. Magda--"

"I'm rather tired after my walk, actually," she smiled apologetically. "Do you think you can handle the groceries?"

"Of course." There was a time when she'd refused to be left out of anything, no matter how mundane. Cutting the grass or washing the dishes were an adventure to her, so long as it was done together. But lately…

Magda pointed to her forehead, and Erik wasted no time standing and kissing her there. Wanda, once more dressed, imitated her mother's gesture. After Erik had kissed his daughter, Wanda pointed to Pietro's forehead, too.

They stepped out of the little house and into pastoral Polish countryside. It was much as Erik remembered from his childhood; before war ripped it apart. Sometimes this life, this place felt surreal.

The ponds were the same. The trees were the same. Children the whole country over were now as they were then: Carefree; innocent. What cared a duck or a squirrel for war and famine long gone?

Sometimes Erik wondered if he was the only living thing that remembered. That raged. That still felt a pressing, un-ignorable need to fight; to prevent.

_Never again. Never again._

As father and twins began the long walk into town, Pietro raced ahead on the dirt path, fast as his chubby little legs would go. "I'm a nudist bastard!" the toddler gleefully informed the geese in the pond.

#

Magda lived for another year and a half. She passed quietly in her sleep one night, with little warning or fanfare.

She'd been in and out of the hospital for her weakened heart all that year. It had last been calculated that the muscular organ was functioning at only fifteen percent. One moment, she was his Magda. The next, she sighed, and was Magda no longer, but a Magda-shaped thing.

Erik held very, very still from where he sat at his desk, his back to the bed. He felt something akin to frost creeping through his system, numbing him and slowing his ability to think. It was a long-cultivated defense against feeling too much; as necessary to his survival as his lungs or his kidneys.

He'd been raised in a place where people just died; dropped like flies. Sometimes three, four to a bunk, and then he'd wake and find himself the only one still breathing.

He thought, as he did nightly, of that time years ago when _Pietro_ had--

No. This was not like that time. There was no circulatory system in his minds eye; no metal to push. This form was an empty shell.

The frost inside Erik spread.

Clearing his throat, Erik stood, and slowly, methodically began to dress. He laced his shoes and he combed his hair, and then he reached for the landline telephone atop the dresser, entering a number he knew by heart. Despite the lateness of the hour, Magda's second cousin reliably picked up after only a few rings. "Va?"

Erik's voice was smooth; polite. "Django, I'm going to need you to come watch the children for a few hours. Is that acceptable?"

Django went very quiet. _He knows,_ Erik thought. _He can't possibly_ not _know._

“Baruch dayan ha'emet,” Django finally replied, only stumbling a little over the Hebrew blessing, and then Erik did feel a twinge through all the frost; a sharp flare in his chest. He echoed the sentiment, and hung up the phone.

Steeling himself, he then approached the thing that was not Magda to study her face.

Her eyes were closed in sleep, her expression mostly peaceful. Her skin was still warm when he used his thumb to massage the troubled wrinkle from her brow.

Then he tucked the bed's blanket around her, and lifted her from the bed, making to leave.

The door to the twin's shared bedroom cracked open as he passed, and wideset blue eyes peered at him from under sleep-tousled, moon-silver hair.

"Shut the door, Pietro," Erik firmly commanded the five-year-old. "Wait for Django."

"Papa--" Pietro rasped, staring at the man and the body he carried. From the faint illumination of their rabbit-shaped nightlight, Erik saw Wanda's sleeping face crease at their noise.

"Do as I say."

The door closed with a miniscule click.

The car Erik had purchased a year or so prior was parked close to the house, and he set Magda in the passenger seat as though this were any of their other late-night visits to the hospital. Muscle memory had him turning back to the house for her wheelchair and cane before it hit him in full that this would no longer be necessary.

He glanced up the road and saw, a few miles off, the flashing red light from Django's bicycle approaching from the farm he shared with his father and grandparents. There would be no need to wait for the boy; he could let himself into the house. Erik buckled himself in and started the car.

So far from the city there was no proper police station, but Erik knew the general direction in which the local _policja_ lived; not far from the rabbi. His house would be an acceptable stopping point for the death of a human woman, would it not? He couldn't imagine calling for an _ambulans._ This wasn't an emergency: it was an inevitability.

_I love you._

Erik could count on one hand the number of times Magda had said those alien words to him through the course of their acquaintance. He didn't doubt their sincerity, but he'd never truly known how to reciprocate.

Oh, he'd occasionally leave poppies on her pillow, and he'd been sure to plant her favorite tomatoes in the garden. He'd rubbed her ankles when they were sore and swollen, and he'd never pushed her away when she pressed close, even when it disrupted his work. Sometimes, she made him laugh.

She'd asked him to stay with her after she'd become pregnant, and so he'd stayed.

But was that _love_? Surely, if it was love, he'd be feeling more than this ice in his veins; this heaviness in his stone heart.

"Perhaps something inside me broke long ago," he told the body of his lover. "I did the best I could."

They completed the rest of their drive in silence.

#

Magda was Romani, but she was also Jewish, and so the synagogue took over much of the following procedures. It all was done so quickly the children still seemed to be in shock.

"You want me to help carry the casket?" Erik asked in some surprise when the offer was made, and Django's eyebrows shot high on his forehead.

"Of course. You are family."

Erik was no blood to the Maximoffs, nor marriage either, but he didn't argue.

"Don't _you_ have family, man?" Django asked, bending to pin a torn black ribbon to the shoulder of Wanda's dress. It was immediately apparent that everybody attending the ceremony was kin or friend to the Maximoffs, and Erik stood alone. "Anybody to come with you?"

"I've no one." Erik's only living blood relatives were the two small children before him. "My kin were all killed in the war."

There was no need to specify _which_ war. He didn't need Django to whistle over Erik's improbable age and longevity; to make a fuss over a loss long grown cold.

"Shit," Django marveled, adding about a dozen syllables into the little word. "You've been around for years, but I still feel like I don't know you at all."

That was fine with Erik. He didn't need to be known.

Pietro raised a hand as though to fiddle with the kippah he wore, but let it drop to his mouth instead, where he chewed his knuckle; a nervous habit he hadn't grown out of yet. "Papa," he said, but Erik had already turned away to shake hands with more and more Maximoffs; names and faces he forgot a moment after they were provided, knowing he'd have no more use for them.

His work here was nearly done, and soon it would be time to work elsewhere.

Magda was buried beside her parents near an apple grove. Erik wished he were capable of feeling more.

#

Of Erik Lehnsherr's children, Wanda was the one more likely to get into fights. She fought children in town for mocking her people. She fought children at school for bullying her brother. She fought and she fought, all fire and teeth, and so it was all the more surprising when Pietro returned from school bruised and dirtied, his knuckles split.

"They said it's my fault mama died," Erik heard his son sniffling to Django as the man cleaned and patched his scrapes. "That the doctors cut her open to pull me out and it made her blood go bad. That's not true, is it?"

And bless poor, honest Django; caught between lie and truth. "Oh, _chikni_..."

Erik walked briskly past the bathroom door. He had work to do, and he compensated Django financially for all his time spent fussing over the children. This emotional falderal was not his concern.

But the door pushed open, and there was Pietro, cheek bruised, eyes huge. "It's _not_ true, is it, papa? They didn't cut mama open--"

"It is called a cesarean," Erik dismissed, glancing quickly away from Pietro's face. The child strongly resembled his mother in facial shape as well as expression. Sometimes looking directly at him felt strange. "Many babies are delivered that way. Don't be so put out by playground gossip."

Pietro's eyes grew, however impossibly, larger. He bit down on his shaking lip as though to swallow back a sob. Then he steeled himself in a very Lehnsherr way, shaking off the blow and squaring his shoulders; standing tall. "I did not kill mama."

"I never said you did."

"I didn't kill mama, and Wanda did _not_ eat me."

Django must have been as confused as Erik felt, because he cocked his head, frowning at the child. "What do you mean, 'ate' you?"

Pietro's eyes darted about, as though unsure whether to continue, but seeing that he now held his father's full attention, he sagged a little.

"Sometimes kids at school say... That twins eat each other. Inside their mama's tummy. And then instead of two twins, there's only one born. They said Wanda started to eat me, so she's bigger and stronger. And that she... She should have finished it."

Children were cruel in their misinformed honesty. It'd been so, so very long since Erik had been a child, and even longer since he'd been allowed to _behave_ as one.

In just over a decade-- no time at all, really!-- Pietro would be grown with all this silliness far behind him. But…

But, oh, what a _fascinating_ theory. Impossible, of course-- being male and female, Pietro and Wanda were created from two separate eggs; encased in their own amniotic sacs. Perhaps Wanda had absorbed more nutrients, but...

Erik made a mental note to put more research into fetal twin absorption. He almost forgot that he was mid conversation; was about to turn for his books and his studies, when--

"-- _Erik_ ," Django snapped, glaring daggers at him.

"What is it now?"

"Tell him that's ridiculous, won't you?"

Erik felt himself slipping away mentally. There was just so much _work_ to do. He'd wasted enough time playing happy family with Magda. "Mm," he agreed noncommittally, and left the bathroom to immerse himself in work.

#

"I do not _want_ to move to America."

Wanda Maximoff, though only seven years old, was still perhaps the only person in his life brave enough to interrupt her father's work; to confront him head on.

Erik didn't notice it, but her resemblance to him was never stronger than when she stood tall, staring down an adversity-- in this case, himself.

Erik looked up at her from his vials and bottles and notes, pushing thick silver hair from his eyes as he was dragged back to reality.

"Oh?" he asked coldly. The frost inside him had hardened to ice over the past few months and thickened by the day. "I don't recall asking. Your opinion is noted and disregarded."

He made to turn back to his work, but she stormed closer until she stood directly in his line of sight, her eyes pure fire. "Didn't you hear me? I will not go. You can't make me!"

"I think you'll find I _can_ , as I am your father. My work takes me there. I've done all I can do here and it's time to move on."

"Work, work, work!" Wanda flung her hands out and nearly knocked over a bottle of radium, which Erik caught using his powers. She didn't tantrum as often as she used to, thank the stars, but it was always explosive when she got this worked up.

Erik was about to call for Django when his daughter fisted her hands in his shirt, shaking him with a child's all-consuming rage. What emotional terrors they were. "I said _no_ ! I am _not_ moving!"

Now Erik began to grow truly annoyed. He took her tiny wrists in hand, reminding himself to be calm; to be collected-- her bones were small and he, quite strong; excessive force was not needed here-- and pulled her off of him.

"I don't have time to deal with your moods," he said, icier than ever. "Go scream somewhere else. We are moving, and that's final."

He used his grip on her wrists to force her several steps back, then released her and turned his back. She was lucky. In his day, if a child had spoken that way to their parents, they'd have gotten the belt for sure. Where had she gotten such an attitude from?

Wanda did not leave. He felt her staring at his back for a long time.

Then she snarled; a wordless sound, more animal than girl, and Erik found himself encompassed in cobalt fire. He did not burn, but rather was lifted; _flung_ an impressive ten, fifteen feet. His entire body hurled over his desk and into the far wall with bone-shuddering force, as though he weighed no more than a doll.

His desk was overturned disastrously; _fantastically_ ; his experiments flung in all directions. His hotplate, crushed, began to smoke; then to flame.

From where he'd crumpled to the floor, Erik gaped at his daughter, jaw dropped, naked shock breaking through his icy countenance. For the first time in years, his full attention was focused only on his child.

For Wanda's part, she looked quite dismayed at what she'd just done, staring at the destruction she'd wrought, then at her hands, then at her father. "I-- I didn't mean to--" she stuttered nervously, taking a quick step away from him. "I just... Papa..."

Erik clambered painfully to his feet, brushing broken glass off his knees, his palms. He clamped both hands tight on Wanda's stiff shoulders and met her fearful eyes, feeling a hot tear of blood slick down his cheek. It seemed her mutation was, at last, manifesting.

New possibilities unfolded rapidly in his mind as he gazed at the child. The things she could do; the world she could change! That such a powerhouse had sprung from _his_ loins--!

"Oh, you magnificent creature," he breathed in true, delighted awe.

#

The twins didn't know what to make of Charles, and it seemed the mutant couldn't decide what to think of his old friend's offspring, either.

"They certainly resemble you, Erik," he observed after some time, shifting in his wheelchair.

"Do they?" Erik was hardly listening. "Pietro, I've left my briefcase by the front door. Fetch it for me."

The child, understanding what was being asked of him, gave Charles an uncertain glance before zipping off at supersonic speeds, down two flights of stairs and through a long hallway before returning with said briefcase in hand.

Charles blinked, cocking his head. "A teleporter?"

"No. He's just fast."

"Im _pressive_!" Charles clapped his hands together once, then rested his chin on his clasped knuckles, regarding the boy with new interest. "What are his limits, I wonder? Is he easily exhausted? What caloric conversion--?"

Pietro, uncomfortable at being viewed like a bug through a microscope by this near-stranger, handed his father the requested briefcase and then took a step back, angling slightly behind his sister.

"They are very attached, I see," Charles observed when Wanda glowered and squared her shoulders, her stance protective over her little brother.

"The culture shock has been a bit trying for them," said Magneto, setting his briefcase down on the handsome mahogany desk and flicking open the clasps. It was an understatement, to be sure.

The twins had hated absolutely everything about their move. No longer free to roam a countryside full of friendly familial faces, they were instead confined to a small New York City apartment, where the lights and the noise never ceased.

The food was strange. Accustomed to a diet of Django's goulash and Ethelinda's fatányéros, they didn't know what to make of the things their housekeeper brought home. They were ostracized at school due to their broken English, and so had grown even more insular; clinging to one another, to traces of their old life.

Not that Erik knew any of this, of course. His focus was on his work; not on the children that wandered his apartment like ghosts in a mausoleum.

"They are attached, yes, but they will learn independence. What say you, old friend? Do you have room in this place for another child? I can pay his tuition, of course. I only ask that you not impose your... _Politics_ on his developing mind. We have our own beliefs."

Pietro, quick as ever, gathered his father's meaning in a heartbeat.

"You are not splitting us," he said in quick, alarmed Polish. "I'm not staying here without her."

He quailed under his father's glare, but did not redact his statement. Indeed; his hand shot to Wanda's, taking it and gripping hard.

Wanda looked equally startled, which was a bad sign. She'd become unmanageable as she aged; every emotional surge resulting in damage, whether property or bodily. Erik didn't much relish being thrown again, not while his ribs were still healing from a few days prior.

"You can't take him away from me," she growled, looking like some sort of feral cat as she stared her father down.

Wanda was overpowered and unstable, despite Erik's tinkering and training. It was near impossible to focus on _two_ mutant children. If only they'd been one; with Pietro's control and obedience and Wanda's sheer strength... They were undisciplined, and required structure. A school would do Pietro good, and then he could focus more of his time on his daughter…

"Don't be so difficult. You'll be able to see one another on holidays."

"Why can't I stay here, too?" Wanda retorted, and pulled Pietro to her, as though he was the rope in a game of tug-of-war. Erik resisted the childish urge to grab for Pietro's free hand.

"I need you with me. We've so much work to do on your powers."

"What about _his_ powers?"

Erik sighed. This was just embarrassing, to be arguing so in front of _Charles Xavier_ , his one and only intellectual equal _._ The closest thing to a peer he'd ever had.

"Pietro's powers are stable and simple. The only thing that will improve him is practice over time, which does not require my attention. I will return for him when he is older and more capable of doing his part in our movement. _You_ , on the other hand--"

As if to illustrate Erik's point, wisps of smoke were curling around Wanda's fisted fingers. She was about at her limit. If he wanted to avoid a complete meltdown within Xavier's office, he needed to leave now. He reached for his daughter's hand, stabilizing himself, weighed down by the metal soles of his shoes--

But this time, it was not Erik who Wanda threw with great force, but professor Charles Xavier himself. He hit the wall so hard the back of his chair snapped off.

#

Pietro did not cry when he was left to the humans, which was surprising.

Then again, he hadn't cried once since the night Wanda had been dropped off her institution. Perhaps he'd aged; matured. Perhaps, like his father, he was filling with ice. Goodness knew; maybe he realized that he was on his own now, and had to fight his own battles.

"This is not a punishment," Erik said, though he wasn't quite sure why he felt compelled to do so. Coddling and stating the obvious was never in his area of interest. "I simply--"

"I know. You have work to do. I _know_." Pietro wasn't looking at him either, his hands tight on the straps of his backpack as he glared at the doorframe; the car; at everything that wasn't his father.

It was interesting how children grew. Never while you were looking right at them, but in sneaky bursts. One day, they were a blobby infant, and then they sprouted; uneven and awkward; tripping over their own feet, squeaking through changing vocal cords.

On that sunny spring day, Pietro had a shadow of the man he'd someday become in his face, his jaw, his hooded eyes.

"I will come for you," Erik promised. "But I need time without distractions."

Pietro said nothing, but every line of his posture screamed ‘ _just get on with it!’_

Erik told himself to be relieved at the lack of fuss. Wanda's institutionalizing had been melodramatic enough; all tears and shouting and fighting. This was nothing in comparison.

For some reason, though, the sight of Pietro shifting his weight from foot to foot, sneakers dusty, chin high, had him feeling oddly.

He remembered, suddenly, that one night long ago when he'd thought Pietro had surely died on top of him. What a _small_ thing he'd been. That panic, that fear-- the same alarm that lived inside him for _years,_ that forced him to look at his sleeping son every night to ensure he was still breathing…

What had _happened_?

Erik gave himself a quick shake. Now was not the time for sentimentality. Pietro was a smart boy; talented; resourceful. He'd do well on his own. He'd be a teenager soon enough, and then he'd certainly relish in the freedom to come of age in New York City. What child wouldn't envy _that_?

"Behave in accordance with the superiority of your bloodline," Erik advised, and Pietro jerked his chin in a nod, still not looking at his father. Maybe he was eager to find his own path in the world. This was a good thing, right?

Erik had lost his own parents when he was around this age, and under far more dire circumstances.

"I am doing this for you," Erik said, and finally Pietro's gaze snapped onto him; hard and sharp. "For all mutants. I am building a world where we can be safe."

The gaze on him did not waver and Erik was reminded, rather uncannily, of Magda. So much so that it felt a little as though she was staring at him out of her son's face.

What would _she_ have thought of all this?

"I must go now," Erik said, and debated, momentarily, whether he should touch Pietro: a hand on the shoulder. A ruffling of that soft, silver hair.

In the end, he decided it best just to leave. No fanfare was required between men; _especially_ not Lehnsherr men.

Erik climbed smoothly into his car, and was shortly gone from sight.

#

From sight, certainly, but not gone entirely.

Wanda, he only found he needed to check on once a year. Things stayed stagnant in her living conditions. Of course sometimes nurses or tutors needed to be traded out, or there were unfortunate incidents that required addressing, but for the most part he found it best to leave her be. One day he knew he'd need her; her unparalleled power; but until then…

Pietro, however, Erik looked on with more regularity. When he acquired assistants, he sent them in his place and listened to their reports whenever he was in town. _The boy is fine. He does well in school._

Somewhere down the line, the reports changed. _He's a little wild. He drives his foster parents up the wall. He went and got his ears pierced, boss._

Teenage rebellion; certainly something to be expected. Erik didn't commune with Charles anymore-- the bedrock of their rift only deeped with time, and they were so firmly on opposite sides-- but he'd gathered that this was all within the realm of normalcy. He didn't worry.

He heard of Pietro's basketball tryouts; his school plays; the fact that he was caught under the bleachers with other boys-- unexpected, but Erik certainly had no room to judge in _that_ department... It all seemed fairly standard material up until the point of his arrest.

Of _course_ he'd been squabling with Charles' wards, but Erik never did much like to see a mutant behind human bars, and trapping someone with Pietro's particular mutation seemed deeply cruel indeed. He didn't hesitate long before freeing the boy. After all, the chess pieces were all beginning to align, and the boy was older now; stronger; more in control of his powers.

"Come with me," he bade his son. There was much work to be done.


End file.
